Illegal Trail Builder Honored by Mountain Bikers

So, what else is new?

Mike


http://www.mysanantonio.com/obituaries/30665494.html:

Bike community lost man who built park trails

Don Lynn Sleeper

•Born: Feb. 24, 1956, in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

•Died: Oct. 6, 2008, in San Antonio

•Survived by: Father, Julian R. Sleeper, mother, Idabelle Sleeper,
sisters Paula Schnittiger and Elizabeth Dyer, brothers Mark Sleeper,
Julian Peters Sleeper and Thomas Sleeper.

•Services: A memorial service is set for 5 p.m. Sunday at O.P.
Schnabel Park in pavilion No. 2. It will be preceded by a memorial
mountain bike ride at 3 p.m.

Colin McDonald - Express-News

The family thought it would be a simple task. Clean up the house, pick
up some mementos and take Don Sleeper's body back to Oklahoma where
his parents had a burial plot.

“Our perception was he was just a loner down here,” said Mark Sleeper,
Don Sleeper's older brother. “We did not understand the biker
community's commitment to him.”

The family did not know just how close Sleeper was to his neighbors or
his church.

In each, he was loved and well known. And in each, just as the family
did, it was assumed Sleeper lived by himself in a little house on the
West Side.

What everyone did not know was that Sleeper, 52, was diagnosed with
melanoma last year and the cancer slowly was spreading and killing
him.

He died Monday at his home. In the last days, the groups finally
started to meet each other.

“They came out of the woodwork,” said Sleeper's mother, Idabelle
Sleeper.

At 6 feet 6 inches tall, Sleeper was hard to miss, but he was not easy
to know.

“To get beyond that smile you had to work,” said Terry McChesney, who
knew Sleeper for 10 years through mountain biking.

McChesney got Sleeper sponsored by Clif Bar to help fund the 18 miles
of mountain bike trails Sleeper built without the city's permission at
O.P. Schnabel Park and along Leon Creek.

Those trails helped prove to the city that mountain biking is popular
in San Antonio and the bikers could build, maintain and police their
own trails. The South Texas Off Road Mountain Bikers Club now is
working with the San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department to build
trails.

While McChesney and Sleeper spent a decade riding, racing and in the
end, going to doctors' appointments, they didn't talk much. There was
little to no mention of the neighbors Sleeper helped, the woman who
made the curtains in his house or the life he had outside of mountain
biking. “I still say he is a mystery,” McChesney said.

On Sunday, part of that mystery should be revealed. McChesney is
expecting more than 300 mountain bikers to show up at O.P. Schnabel
for the memorial bike ride and service. Members of Wayside Chapel
Evangelical Free Church will be there, as will the neighbors and those
who knew Sleeper through the odd jobs he kept.

The park is fitting. It was where Sleeper spent his time and one of
the few places that could hold all of the people who cared about him.
--
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)

Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!

http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande

"Mike Vandeman" wrote in message
...
So, what else is new?

Mike



You are a real piece of work, Michael. Don't you have to clear your posts
with your parole officer, or at least the ward superintendent?

On Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:02:57 -0700, Mike Vandeman
wrote:

So, what else is new?

Mike


http://www.mysanantonio.com/obituaries/30665494.html:

Bike community lost man who built park trails

Don Lynn Sleeper

•Born: Feb. 24, 1956, in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

•Died: Oct. 6, 2008, in San Antonio

•Survived by: Father, Julian R. Sleeper, mother, Idabelle Sleeper,
sisters Paula Schnittiger and Elizabeth Dyer, brothers Mark Sleeper,
Julian Peters Sleeper and Thomas Sleeper.

•Services: A memorial service is set for 5 p.m. Sunday at O.P.
Schnabel Park in pavilion No. 2. It will be preceded by a memorial
mountain bike ride at 3 p.m.

Colin McDonald - Express-News

The family thought it would be a simple task. Clean up the house, pick
up some mementos and take Don Sleeper's body back to Oklahoma where
his parents had a burial plot.

“Our perception was he was just a loner down here,” said Mark Sleeper,
Don Sleeper's older brother. “We did not understand the biker
community's commitment to him.”

The family did not know just how close Sleeper was to his neighbors or
his church.

In each, he was loved and well known. And in each, just as the family
did, it was assumed Sleeper lived by himself in a little house on the
West Side.

What everyone did not know was that Sleeper, 52, was diagnosed with
melanoma last year and the cancer slowly was spreading and killing
him.

He died Monday at his home. In the last days, the groups finally
started to meet each other.

“They came out of the woodwork,” said Sleeper's mother, Idabelle
Sleeper.

At 6 feet 6 inches tall, Sleeper was hard to miss, but he was not easy
to know.

“To get beyond that smile you had to work,” said Terry McChesney, who
knew Sleeper for 10 years through mountain biking.

McChesney got Sleeper sponsored by Clif Bar to help fund the 18 miles
of mountain bike trails Sleeper built without the city's permission at
O.P. Schnabel Park and along Leon Creek.

Those trails helped prove to the city that mountain biking is popular
in San Antonio and the bikers could build, maintain and police their
own trails. The South Texas Off Road Mountain Bikers Club now is
working with the San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department to build
trails.

While McChesney and Sleeper spent a decade riding, racing and in the
end, going to doctors' appointments, they didn't talk much. There was
little to no mention of the neighbors Sleeper helped, the woman who
made the curtains in his house or the life he had outside of mountain
biking. “I still say he is a mystery,” McChesney said.

On Sunday, part of that mystery should be revealed. McChesney is
expecting more than 300 mountain bikers to show up at O.P. Schnabel
for the memorial bike ride and service. Members of Wayside Chapel
Evangelical Free Church will be there, as will the neighbors and those
who knew Sleeper through the odd jobs he kept.

The park is fitting. It was where Sleeper spent his time and one of
the few places that could hold all of the people who cared about him.

Some mountain bikers are as tacky as the bloated hogs who attend
a funeral for a "fallen" Hells Angel!

fred

On Oct 10, 2:18*am, "Jeff Strickland" wrote:
"Mike Vandeman" wrote in message

...

So, what else is new?

Mike

You are a real piece of work, Michael. Don't you have to clear your posts
with your parole officer, or at least the ward superintendent?

I've found that forwarding these types of posts to the people who
write the newspaper articles makes Michael J. Vandeman looks like a
total reject of a human, especially the "Evolution In Action" comments
he makes. He's becoming well know for being a social reject far
outside of these groups.


It gets interesting when the reporter Googles Mike and discovers what
a nutcase he is, I am sure it does nothing to further his cause, in
fact, it does the opposite.